


Pyromania Solves a Lot of Things

by Vortaesthetic



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dogs, Drinking, F/M, Smoking, Young Adults
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-12 03:20:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11728428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vortaesthetic/pseuds/Vortaesthetic
Summary: Packrat Loki burns his way though relics of his childhood of lies. He runs away. He throws his family away, they don't mean anything. Except that they do. Forgiveness is a hard lesson to learn.





	Pyromania Solves a Lot of Things

**Pyromania Solves a Lot of Things**  
Reigndeer_Games

One could say that Loki Odinson was abnormal about many things. He's had a hard time arguing that point over the years, so this is a perceived fault of character he usually doesn't try very hard to correct. On occasion, he preens with it. Most of the time, it's a mantle he's not quite sure how to wear.

He's not quite sure about a lot of things these days. Adulthood is like that, you spend lots of time being confused in general and waiting for something to happen. Inevitably, life goes on. Nothing ever stays the same for long enough.

Growing up? Terrible idea. One of the worst I've ever had, he thinks to himself.

Every kid in the history of ever has desired to grow up. That was the opening curtain, the start of the journey that every child has an innate craving for. Adulthood being this mythical wonderful adventure where all dreams have come to fruition and nothing is impossible and everything can be done forever.

Yeah. Kids are silly that way. He'd been that way, too. 

He's twenty-nine now, and quite a bit more bitter and cynical than he'd ever thought that he'd be. This was an atypical evening for him; instead of watching reruns of Planet Earth in the sanctity of his air-conditioned abode with a freezer dinner and his dog for company, he found himself sat out on the dusty tailgate of Thor's pickup truck, nursing a cheap beer and chucking shit into a fire barrel.

Glorious!

He'd found out some things, recently. Things about his parents, about his brother. About himself. Honestly, the fact that he was adopted was not really so much of a shock. He's the proverbial black sheep in a flock of white fleece, and his whole life he had studied that wrongness, that abstraction. It was like a... completion, so to speak. The validation of fears that he'd always had. So, no. That in itself wasn't the issue.

The issue is the dishonesty. The issue is all of those golden childhood memories ringing false. They had been forcibly exhumed from that happy, hazy place in his brain and shoved under a clinical microscope, to be picked apart like a forensic analyst for any scrap of betrayal, any whiff of a lie.

The issue is that he's not sure if Odin actually ever loved him.

The issue is that Frigga does love him, but lied to him all the same.

The issue is that Thor is his brother, but is not his brother. That he knows that he, too loves him-- but that Thor probably doesn't know who his little brother actually is.

The issue is that everything he would have ever used to describe himself or his place in life is a lie.

He is a lie.

What is he supposed to do with that? He's always hated uncertainties, and this whole thing is this indistinct mass of feelings and unresolved intentions and he can't do anything about it. There's nothing to be done.

Escape is his only choice. Escape... or compliance.

So, escape it was. He'd decided that what he needed was distance. Something fresh. A new place to go to clear his head, free from the loaded memories of his past. To get away from his ghosts for awhile and just get a chance to breathe.

But he failed to anticipate one thing: his pack-rat sensibilities had ensured that he'd squirreled away a metric ton of useless garbage. Every single paper he had ever received in high school and college, stuffed away into a bag or closet, piling up until he had a foreboding stash of trash to deal with. He'd already packed up most everything else, but this junk would not be following him out to Santa Fe.

Instead of spending another night alone in his time-honored fashion, he decided to do something a little more productive. So, fire and booze it was. Accompanied by sloppy dog-kisses from Fen, his goofy black labrador.

It's a trip down memory lane, alright. He's holding a marching band travel itinerary from his sophomore year in high school, when they had traveled on an away game to Beaumont. All of a sudden, he's back riding in that rickety bus, eau d' sweaty neoprene perfuming the air after the game, riding with the windows down, trying to convince Sif to share the last of his sour gummy worms with him.

Oh. 

Yuck.

Into the fire that goes.

He tosses another sheaf of papers into the flames. Old paper bills, this time. Let's burn those, too. I don't have the patience for shredding, he thinks.

He finds himself running across a couple of heavier items in the sack of loose paper. Heavy. Bound. Thick. Books, of some sort. One of them was a thick spiral of journal paper where he wrote his first terrible long-running story in his freshman year. Cringe-worthy, but he remembers furiously scribbling in the pages, trying to goad Thor and Jane into reading it.

It was this awful, meandering thing, the kind of garbage that anyone who has ever written has to get out of their system. It was a fanfiction about characters from Zelda, cobbled together with odd bits of random sci-fi and asspull fantasy tropes. The cherry perched atop this particular shit sundae was a godawful romance between his Gary Stu and paper-flat fiance that mercifully fell flat on its face on chapter 26 when he abruptly stopped writing this thing and started making an attempt at developing a social life.

Thank god for small miracles. And thank god that Jane never humored me on reading it. I don't know if I would ever live this down. DEFINITE burn.

The other heavy item in the bag was his high school yearbook. He set that on the tailgate next to him, to preserve it for posterity.

He swung his legs idly beneath the tailgate as he watched Fen proudly drag a long stick out of the brush line, trotting happily back over to Loki's truck. Oh, what he would give to live a life as simple as a dog's. He returned to rifling through the black plastic sack.

More junk. A handful of photos from his junior prom, where he had attended stag in a sorry suit and sat around shooting shit with his other loser buddies. No tears were to be lost when throwing those into the fire, so up in flames they went.

Here and there, he found more things to chuck in. A book of weird, random doodles he'd kept between himself and his grade-school best friend Lorelei. “Randomness” is a quality one revels in in adolescence. It is significantly less amusing with age. And with responsibility. And seeing as though Lorelei went her own way in life and was unlikely to ever encounter Loki ever again, this was something he could let go quite easily.

Poof, flare, snap. One-by one, relics of a cringe-worthy nerdy teenagerdom were neatly burned away. It's in the heat and crackle of that nostalgic fire and the yeasty taste of his cheap warm beer that he can feel the years that have gone by.

He has to be on the road tomorrow, if he can help it. His rental opens up for move-in in a couple of days and he's already got an appointment for the pre-hire documents and fingerprinting that he needs to start work. Fen's stuff is all packed up and his bed is set up in the cab of his truck. Very little keeps him here except for the desire to tie up his loose ends... and a teensy-tiny little bit of fear. This is the first big step he's making by himself, and the fact that he's largely doing it without his family's support is a little bit scary, to be honest.

Part of him is just hoping that Thor will come rumbling up in his diesel truck and offer some morsel of strangely sage advice or affection. To give him that big, brotherly bear hug, to undo the hurt he feels right now. But it's just as well that he's leaving; he's just as likely to punch Thor as he is to hug him, so it's probably not really time for that stage yet. But oh, it would make things so much easier.

He drops a box of old transcripts into the barrel, forgetting to pace himself. He lights a cigarette and takes a drag just as he's hosing the new tinder with lighter fluid. He puffs idly for a few minutes, plucking his phone out of his pocket. His mother's beautiful smiling face was set as his lockscreen and he snorts at the image he must be cutting right now; tired, thin, and threadbare with stringy hair, sucking on cancer sticks and cheap swill. Reminded of the sure lecture he would get were his mother aware of it, he tossed the lit cigarette back into the barrel to reignite it.

9:45 pm. He's got to keep track of time. He can't afford to waste another sleepless night out here. Again. The plastic-molded wheel-well makes a poor pillow, he reminded himself.

His garbage sack is empty now. He pulls his old flannel-lined jacket close to his body, seeking comfort more than heat. The fire in the barrel flickers lowly within as it works to consume everything he's already fed to it. There's no wind tonight, it should be safe to leave it to burn itself out. He picks up the small stack of items he saved from the sack and stands to close the tailgate of the truck when the yearbook slips out of his hand and hits the ground.

Maybe it's the way the light hits the foil lettering on the spine. Maybe it's the way it landed, face-down on the caliche with some pages awkwardly folded against the rocks. Something inspires him to pick it up, dust it off, and look inside it for the first time in several years.

Pages upon pages of faces and names. Some of them were ones he remembered. Some of them he remembered only by name. This was his junior-year yearbook; Thor Odinson posed on page eleven with his blue graduation gown and the same fake diploma roll that the picture company had everyone pose with. His head was crowned by his brother's trademark surfer tousle, making his wide, toothy grin shine. Thor, in that respect had changed very little since.

He himself was on page twenty-two. Reedy Loki Odinson had been wearing an oversized green hoodie that was out of season. Bespectacled with thick, boxy black plastic frames and hair trimmed neat and close, he was the very picture of the nondescript nerdy little sibling.

He flipped through more pages. There was Sif, who had been very tomboyish and had since grown into a fiercely beautiful (if perhaps too independent) woman. Heimdall-- the student council president with the all-knowing gaze and piercing eyes that had always made Loki feel small and childish with no more than his silent, uncanny gaze. Fandral and Hogun, two of Thor's other friends were pictured in the senior fair hurling water balloons at each other (Mostly Fandral, as prim, quiet Hogun was too dignified for that sort of nonsense).

He came across pages with sloppy, smeared ink scrawled across pages. There were all sorts of things written in this book.

_“for a good time call...”_ No thanks.

_“HATE THIS BITCH.”_ Wow, he didn't even know that girl. He probably didn't even know who wrote that, either.

_“stay cool loki dont u be changing 4 ne 1 but me.”_ Yeah, I didn't know you, either.

_“have a cool summer, see you next year.”_ Another generic one.

Everything written in here was amazingly generic. And that thought seemed to stir something cold and heavy in his gut. Because if this book were anything to go by, you would think that he'd never had any friends.

But thinking back on that... did he? Did he really?

Because what happened to them during the summer, when he was overwrought with anxiety and boredom, and craved a friendly face to help him tide over to the next school year? They most certainly were not there.

And what about when they last-minute invited him to their parties and ditched him to dog-sit their lonely Pyrenees while they raved out in the brush? Maybe his third-wheel anxiety wasn't paranoia, after all.

What happened to them when they treated him as a complimentary counselor and sounding board, but refused to take him seriously or return the favor? Such horseshit they fed him about his supposed wisdom, all so they could continue to take and take.

He would grin and jest and entertain them with his silliness to charm them, because that was the only way they actually acknowledged him.

Little to gain. Much to lose. In business, this would have been seen as a parasitic partnership. Toxic, useless.

He felt like something collapsed somewhere in his mind as a cold, twisted lump seemed to settle in his throat. This was many years ago, days long-since passed that he could not return to. But it was more significant than a bitterly remembered walk down memory lane. These were principles. Habits. Learned behaviors. The perpetuation of these weaknesses were still alive and well today. He was simply too blind to see it, fooling everyone with his ruse so thoroughly that he himself fell for his own lies.

He had been too blind to realize what he really wanted. What he really needed. What he really deserved.

_I deserved better. I know I did. I do, even now._

_I deserve to be considered. To be valued. To be wanted. To be missed. To be loved. To be appreciated. To be noticed. To be respected._

_Don't I?_

_That's not too much to ask._

_What is it that Thor has that I don't? He's always had those things. They are his to take, freely offered to him by everyone. I am expected to buy it, to fight for it, to accept its' pale imitation._

He tore pages from the book's glue binding and crumpled them up, hurling them into the fire with grunts of disgust. He could feel his face twisted into a rictus of rage as he slammed the cover into the barrel and watched it go up in flames. He figured that he must have looked like a mad vagrant, but he couldn't care; at that moment he'd realized that he had lost yet again to Thor. Even when he didn't know there was a battle to be fought, he lost.

His phone buzzed. Thor had been sending text messages to him again. _“Where are you,”_ one read, _“Mother is worried about you, call me.”_ After that one, there had been another. _“Loki, this isn't funny. It's been several days. CALL ME. NOW.”_

He rolled his eyes and texted back, tapping idly with one hand as he wrestled a slobbery rock out of Fen's mouth with the other. 

_“I'll talk to you when I'm damn good and ready,”_ he texts back.

The response is immediate. Thor must be holding the damn thing, his luck.

_“oh thank god you're alright where are you at”_

Ah. Thor must be so overwhelmed by his emotions and his relief that punctuation and capitalization are of little concern. People demonstrate their love in odd ways, he supposed.

_“Don't worry about it. I'll tell you if I want to. Right now, I don't.”_

Loki's phone started to buzz to life when Thor attempted to call. His slender fingers calmly slid over the decline button onscreen by the second ring.

_'Why is it that you never listen to me? You and Odin are exactly the same,”_ he replied. He'd only hesitated for a second before he hit send. Contrition, and all that. Thor should be thoroughly insulted by the name calling, but he supposed that Thor never quite appreciated Loki's refusal to worship their father as a paragon of anything. It probably sailed right over his head, anyhow.

His phone chimed again. _“Why won't YOU listen to US for a minute,”_ the reply read. _“You can be mad later. Give them a chance to explain, please. Give me a chance to explain. I don't know what's going on. All I know is that you are telling me things and they are telling me things, and I don't know the truth yet. Don't do something you'll regret. You are getting drastic and I am worried. Please.”_

He tossed the slobbery rock out back into the brush again, his goofy black dog following it back out into the shadows outside the firepit. He set his phone down and rested his head in his hands, raking his fingernails against his dry scalp. What to say? What to say? Too many things, too many things!

He rubbed his tired eyes hard as he considered his reply. _“Thor,”_ he began as he fretted over his message. _“Go home. I won't be there. Don't call me. I'll call you. I will. Just not right now.”_

With that missive sent, he stood up from the tailgate and slammed it in position with a little more force than necessary. He whistled for Fen to climb into the cab of his pickup as he started the engine. As he made his way back through town with stars overhead and dim headlights illuminating the road before him, he can't help but think that he should have been better about reading between the lines.

–

Thor hadn't texted back.

Mother and Father, he hadn't heard a peep from since.

Loki and Fen left out early that next morning, cramming his truck bed full of boxes in the early dawn, stuffing bags of clothes in the passenger floorboard. Fen thought of it as a beanbag, anyway. Sunrise saw Loki pushing westward on IH-10, his window rolled down and a Marlboro black perched between his lips. The radio was on low, but there was too much to think about to listen to the radio.

He stopped to let Fen out in Schulenberg. He leaned against the wheel of his pickup, idly watching Fen cavort around the rest stop. When he was done being silly and troublesome, they packed up again and got back on the road. Fen decided to sit on the bench seat with his panting mouth right in Loki's face.

Worse things in the world than stinky dog breath, I guess, he mused as Fen scooted close for a sloppy smooch. He flipped out his phone and pulled up Google Maps to gauge the speed of his journey. he had a timetable and a schedule to keep. He couldn't afford to be late.

He had no idea what he was going to do with the rest of his life, but right now he felt a little cleaner despite his losses.


End file.
